No More Time

Greg Delanty

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780807174272
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In No More Time, Greg Delanty offers a celebration of the natural environment that also bemoans its mistreatment at the hands of humans. The collection's long sequence, "A Field Guide to People, " is an alpha-bestiary of twenty-six sonnets, each a meditation on a species of flora or fauna that is thriving, endangered, or extinct. Evoking an earthly heaven, purgatory, and hell for plants and animals, these poems function also as love letters to the biosphere as they connect the past with the present in both form and content. In the middle of this sonnet sequence, a section labeled "Breaking News" gives voice in poetry to the political state of our planet with a balance of pathos, wit, and hope. Delanty stresses the deep underlying connections within and between the natural world and humankind, rather than the fragmented world stressed at the beginning of the twentieth century. No More Time witnesses the effects of climate change and presents a vital view of what remains at stake for engaged global citizens in the twenty-first century.

PART 1

A Field Guide to People

Aye-Aye

The name of this lemur, which has an unusually long middle finger, is derived from a person’s alarmed utterance on seeing the animal.

So that’s how the name came about, aye-aye.

Solitary shade, spirit of the night,

your face caught in the light seems to ask why

you’re given no quarter, shot on sight.

The picture shows your bat-eared head,

large as a baby’s, staring in fright.

Your extraterrestrial, wide-eyed dread

and manicured long nails scare,

magnify into nightmare. Folks are misled

by their imaginations to needless fear.

You are the bringer of bad luck, harbinger

of death. Aye-aye, you continue to glare

back, your face a mirror, terror’s dead ringer.

With a long middle digit you give the finger.

Bos taurus

The raising of cattle adds to climate change, partly due to the methane produced by bacteria in the stomachs of cows.

They’re such a part of our life, Bos taurus.

We take for granted the silk of milk for tea,

bullions of butter, the panoply of cheese, plus:

they haul loads, pull plows, act as money,

a dowry, are a daily staple, and so much more.

You browse a meat aisle: filet mignon, sirloin, kidney?

What’s tender? There’s a deal on veal? Forget the poor

calf. Scruples flit like flies around the tail of a cow.

Quell your qualms, man. You’re a natural carnivore.

Whatever you do, don’t look at your hooves now.

You’re standing in their skins. Such a bleeding heart.

Your default: headless hen, bleatless lamb, ass of sow.

And gas, you ruefully laugh, loading milk in the cart,

thinking of what the billions of cattle burp and fart.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prefatory Note
• Proem: Loosestrife
• PART 1. A Field Guide to People
• PART 2. Breaking News
• PART 3. A Field Guide to People (continued)
• Envoy: Zayante
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND NOTES